Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali

by Cassidy Randall

Nations were racing to send men to the moon, but no woman in recorded history had yet stood atop the highest points on Earth.

The storm that broke over the men at the top lasted for seven days. Winds were estimated at three hundred miles an hour.

Denali, “less technical” on the West Buttress didn’t translate to “easy.” The route still presents hidden crevasses big enough to swallow a bus, icefall, avalanches, and steep ridges that drop off thousands of feet. And the hauling of heavy loads up massive elevation and distance, altitude, and Denali’s extreme remoteness and unpredictable weather—these elements didn’t simply disappear on the West Buttress.

disheartening thousand feet before gaining another eight hundred over four miles to Camp One. Camp Two would be at 9,700 (3,000 m) feet. Up a steep, knifelike ridge with a drop of two thousand feet off one side and three thousand off the other would be Camp Three, at 14,200 feet (4,300 m). High Camp would be

On an expedition that can last up to thirty days, group dynamics are critical. Among the harsh elements of the mountain, existence narrows to the endless labor of ascending and meeting basic needs. That ultimate presence, that forced simplicity is what enthralls so many climbers. It strips people to their very foundations, vaporizing facades and peeling away layers down to the truest one—which is why any adventurer aims to be sure that whomever they’re spending a month straight with is tolerable at minimum. At the same time, altitude plays tricks on the brain. People are initially euphoric

at oxygen-light elevations. But with time, altitude turns up the volume on irritability, anxiety, and exhaustion. In the heights, we are given a taste of rapture and then laid bare, turned toward our worst selves. Discovering how we react through it all, and how we treat those journeying with us, is something of a spiritual mystery, an act of self-excavation, that continues to call people to the big mountains of the world. But Grace

layer of snow that hides a crevasse and falls in, that climber

is automatically belayed by the others. Moving together on a rope is a safe but slower process. Going unroped, which is faster and more efficient for movement, is a common practice when snowfall is thick enough to make for strong snow bridges across cracks, or when particular routes up glaciers are well-known to be safe. Both M. Y. and Arlene had climbed the Whitney Glacier before and gone unroped on those ascents. As the team navigated a section of jumbled ice down low, the crevasses were narrow and exposed—the crevasse that can be seen is far friendlier than the one that’s hidden—and

the last months had been hectic for Margaret, they had been manic for Grace, Arlene, Dana, and M. Y.: ordering food and gear, from snowshoes to special frame packs designed for heavy loads, and constant worrying over whether thirty days’ worth was enough food. It would be hell to carry. But what if storms kept them pinned to the mountain for longer than that? What if some of the caches of food they left along their route were buried in avalanches and they needed extra supplies? There were a thousand what-ifs on an expedition, and way out alone in the wilderness of Alaska, the need to be prepared for each one felt urgent and necessary.

This was no small feat; the expedition boasted nearly four hundred pounds of food alone to keep six people fed over the course of a month on the mountain. And

Some of the women had trouble even getting their fifty-to-sixty-pound packs, loaded with boxes of food and fuel, on their backs. The Kelty packs they’d bought for this climb were designed to carry heavy weight. A metal frame held up a large sack on the mid-back and above, and a wide strap around the lower back distributed weight around the hips. When Arlene tried to pick hers up off the snow, it moved about as much as a giant boulder. She sat down and slipped her arms through the straps, then struggled to her knees—where

assigned the task of placing six-foot-tall slender rods made of bamboo topped with red flags, called wands, along their route, the equivalent of a bread crumb trail between camps. In the event of the sudden blizzards and whiteout conditions for which Denali was notorious, the wands would signal their way back to shelter in lieu of wandering

morning of day eight on Denali brought two feet of heavy snow that encased the Damsels’

endless task of melting water to stay hydrated, cooking food for the group, and trying to keep things dry—a mammoth challenge in blowing snow, and with snow constantly melting off of gear. There was the nightly task of trying to keep essential items from freezing: pulling water bottles and boots into their sleeping bags to keep them warm with their own body heat. And there was the persistent,

feet (5,200 m): High Camp. A steep rampart leading to the peak itself rose above, even though it appeared they were already on top of the world here. Camp Three was so far below it was dwarfed by the massive rock and ice formations of the mountain, and they were higher now than most of the surrounding peaks.

This plateau was an unforgiving place, with nighttime temperatures often twenty to forty below zero (−29 to −40°C) and winds wailing in excess of seventy miles per

This plan accommodated both relays of necessary gear and good practice for acclimation, which called for carrying supplies to high elevations and then returning to sleep down at lower elevations, allowing the body time to catch up to altitude gain.

But Dana couldn’t sleep. Her feet had gotten so cold that it took two full hours of massaging them and wiggling her toes to warm them again. The thought of spending four days in this miserable cave—if the wind and weather held them here—was more than she cared to think about. Finally, at one in the morning, Dana gave in and swallowed a sleeping pill too. Each woman had limped into sleep, crowded in their sleeping bags with their water bottles and boots stuffed in with them to keep from freezing, with the same thought playing across their minds: Please let the weather forecast be wrong.

The cold up here was incredible. Margaret’s feet were on their way to numb. She had to sit, back against the ferocious wind, to take her crampons off in order to get her wind pants on over the top of all the other layers she was already wearing. Arlene crouched next to her. They tried to force down some food even though the altitude had silenced their appetites; they needed the calories to fuel their ascent. But everything they’d brought was frozen. Arlene nearly broke her tooth on a piece of Grace’s moose jerky. She put it inside her coat to thaw against her body. The water bottles were frozen too.

“No. I have other things to do tomorrow. I’m climbing the mountain today.”

At sea level, the air contains nearly twenty-one percent oxygen; the air at the summit of Denali contains less than half of that, and it’s categorized as Extreme High Altitude. (The 26,000-foot-plus [7,900-meter] peaks of the Himalaya are considered Ultra High). High Camp, sitting at just over 17,000 feet (5,200 m), would at least get Grace down to the next level of Very High Altitude, and every thousand feet they descended would give her more oxygen with which to recover.